


rain comes dancing to the earth

by phantomlistener



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Ghosts, Mystery, Romance, Supernatural Elements, Victorian era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomlistener/pseuds/phantomlistener
Summary: Miss Ida Marchmont was the sixth governess to arrive at the manor house, and the villagers were prepared for her swift departure: the house was haunted, or so it was said, and not a single governess could reside there long without being fairly terrorised out of her mind.Miss Ida Marchmont did not leave.
Relationships: Female Ghost/Governess, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	rain comes dancing to the earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elstaplador](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/gifts).



> Title from Byron's [Storm in the Alps](https://www.bartleby.com/360/5/154.html)

The villagers began to talk when the second governess left, picked up by a horse and carriage at dawn never to be seen again in the county: tales of terror, and of things seen or half-imaginined in the night. The departure of the third governess after two days confirmed their suspicions; the fourth and fifth, after just one night apiece, turned their good-natured curiosity into fearful mutterings. The lord of the manor was away too often, they said, leaving his two small babes alone in the sprawling house with no more than their governess and a handful of household staff for company. They said too that he cared more for a pretty face than for a woman who could look after his children with the attention and dedication demanded by the circumstances, his wife no more than a year dead and the youngest still crying for her.

The sixth governess arrived in spring, just as the crocuses bloomed in the churchyard. The carriage deposited Miss Ida Marchmont at the front of the house and did not linger: the evening was drawing in, and although the two faces in the nursery window were almost certainly the two children, the driver would not look long enough to be sure.

But spring passed, and the crocuses gave way to hawthorn blossom and foxgloves, and Miss Marchmont did not leave. Summer turned to autumn, the hedgerows bursting with rose hips and crackling with drying leaves, and still she remained, tending to her two charges as if nothing was even remotely amiss. She attended chapel on Sundays, laid flowers on the grave of the children's mother.

The gossip quieted.

Autumn became winter, and on the shortest night of the year Ida woke to find the room cold, the banked fire that usually lasted through even the bitterest nights burned out and dark. Tongues of icy air wound their way through the gaps in her blankets, curled around her legs and feet with no regard for her circulation, and full of sleep as she was, she had the strangest feeling of being watched.

“Is someone there?” she murmured into the grey near-light of early morning. “Polly? Robert?”

There came laughter, soft and musical, from the far corner of the room, and Ida sat up in bed, eyes straining in the half-light. “Polly?” she said again, questioning, though she knew it was not her young charge: her laughter was sweet and uninhibited, the delight of an innocent.

This was something altogether different.

“Not Polly,” whispered a woman's voice, and a figure coalesced from the gloom.

She was insubstantial in the watery pre-dawn light, clad solely in a plain white nightgown with her hair gathered in a single braid that lay across her shoulder.

“Good morning,” said Ida, pulling her blankets up across her chest in lieu of her dressing gown, which hung neatly on the back of her closed door. “I believe we have yet to be introduced?”

The woman laughed again, and the racing clouds outside let moonlight stab through her gossamer-clear body. “A strange way to greet a phantom,” she said, and took a single step forwards. The moonlight struck her face, and it was smiling.

“You do not frighten me,” Ida said softly, “for if you truly wished harm then I suspect the children sleeping close by would sleep no more. No, by all reports you haunt the governesses alone, and a spirit that will not harm an innocent child cannot be evil.”

“You cannot be sure of that,” said the ghost.

Ida smiled. “You stand and converse with me, spirit, and make no attempt to harm me. I am certain. I think perhaps you guard those children, keep them safe from harm?”

“Clever Ida.” The ghost moved closer, and Ida could see that her body was surrounded by a faint blue-green glow barely visible to the naked eye.

“Then the stories in the village are true – it was indeed you who chased away all those other governesses.”

“It was,” the ghost acknowledged, a strange sort of amusement in her eyes.

“ _Why_? And why do you not terrorise me as you did those poor women who fled from here in fear?”

“You care for those children with kind words and gentle hands,” said the ghost. “The others...did not.” She hesitated, curious. “Why are you not afraid?”

There was a moment's silence, the moonlight flooding in through the uncurtained window and turning all it touched to silver, before Ida spoke. “My grandmother saw spirits,” she said. “I do not share the extent of her gifts, but I...you are not the first emissary of the afterlife to have crossed my path.”

“Sweet, fearless Ida,” the ghost whispered, and reached out to touch her cheek with an almost-substantial hand. “Until next time,” she said, and vanished into the pale light of the moon.

* * *

The ghost became Miss Marchmont's constant companion as autumn became winter, frost touching ponds and rooves alike with spidery fingers, and as winter thawed into a stormy and unpredictable spring, and one night as the equinox approached Ida dreamed only of the cold: aching, deathly cold that spread across her body like a creeping frost and froze the very blood in her veins. She lay immobile in her narrow bed, pinned in place as surely as if she were suspended in a massive block of ice, and outside the leaves rustled and whispered in the ghost's voice: “ _Ida...my Ida...._ ”

An almighty crash shocked her into wakefulness and suddenly she could move again. It was dark, and the thin panes of glass in her window rattled with thunder, the fire in her grate long burned down to glowing embers. With a shaking hand she reached for the candle that lay always on the table next to her bed and drew back the covers to kneel in front of the fire coaxed a new flame onto the candlewick.

“ _Follow_ ,” said the ghost, her voice faraway and distant, and Ida opened her door. The children in the room beyond were breathing level and soft and did not stir as she passed, shielding the flickering candle so as not to disturb their sleep.

Out in the corridor the wood-panelled walls were stained a deep mahogany that, in the flickering candlelight, may as well have been black, devouring the light like hungry mouths.

“I'm coming,” whispered Ida, sheltering the flame with her free hand.

“ _Come_ ,” whispered the ghost, and her voice came from the walls, the floor, the air itself.

She crept forward, step by careful step, down stairs and across a gallery into a damp hallway, following the soft whispers and pleas of her ghost. Somewhere above her a floorboard creaked, obscenely loud in the silence. The candlelight picked out intricate cobwebs, thick as lace over the oil lamps fixed to the wall, and danced over unsmiling faces of painted ancestors. Their eyes followed her as she went.

“ _Hurry_ ,” came the ghost's pleading voice.

Ida could see barely two feet in front of her, the candle lighting the way only so far ahead, and so it was with not a little surprise that she came to a door, large and wooden with heavy wrought iron across it in three thick bars and studded with intricate nails.

Thunder roared and the door shook, a sudden draft extinguishing her light, and Ida realised that she had come to the thick outer walls of the manor house. They were medieval, or so the lord of the manor had told her when she arrived, full of pride in his family's history; the door looked as if it had survived the centuries along with the house itself.

“ _Ida_ ,” whispered the ghost, her voice full of exhaustion. “ _Sweet Ida, help me_.”

The door handle was wrought of the same iron as ornamented the door itself, heavy but delicately made. It turned easily, and the wind outside caught the door as it opened, pushed it wide and made Ida stumble with its force. It was bitterly cold, the driving rain biting at her hands and face even as she still stood within the house.

She looked out into the storm.

The view was dizzying, as unfamiliar as if she looked out upon a place she had never seen, rather than the gardens in which she had wandered carefree for the last twelvemonth. At some point in the night lightning had hit the tallest of the yew trees. It had crashed through the delicate chapel roof and brought down the south wall, scattering tiny jigsaw-puzzle pieces of stained glass across the grass that shimmered like eyes with every flash of lightning.

Still the wind raged, and the remaining yew trees in front of the chapel creaked and protested with ominous intensity. Ida's hair was dragged out of its braid and flew violently around her head as if it had a life of its own. Lightning flashed, closer and brighter than before – and suddenly _she_ was there, shivering against the rain and the wind as if her body were corporeal. Her long dark hair was a sodden waterfall down her back, and her thin white shift was soaked through, every detail of her body as clear as if she were naked. She held her pale hands out in supplication. “So cold,” she said, “my bones are so cold,” and Ida took her in her arms, settled her own thick outer shawl around those insubstantial shoulders, and held her close.

“Not enough,” said the ghost. Her sweet upturned face was wet with rain. “My bones, Ida, my bones.”

“But you're-” Pulling the shawl tighter around the ghost, Ida nodded in sudden understanding. “They laid you to rest in the chapel, did they not, my sweet ghost?”

She nodded, and Ida pressed a kiss to a cold, wet cheek, surprisingly solid. “Then we shall find your bones, dearest spirit, and warm them with blankets of earth and grass, and all will be well.”

“Yes,” came the weak reply. “Yes, oh Ida-” She fell to the ground, and the dark mud stained her shift.

Ida knelt, not caring that the grass underfoot was muddy and waterlogged, and rubbed cold hands up and down her arms as if she had circulation to improve. “Wait here,” she said urgently. “I will not be long.”

The chapel was a forbidding ruin. The yew had destroyed most of the south wall, taking the roof with it and exposing the finely-wrought statuary and beautifully carved pews to the fury of the elements. Somewhere in the distance, the river that brought salmon and trout to the estate's dining table roared and thundered like the ocean itself.

The fallen stones were cold, wet and slippery under her bare feet, inclined to shift at the slightest pressure. With infinite care, Ida picked a dainty path across the devastation, navigating by her hands and the intermittent lightning up and over the fallen ruin of the wall, and into the inner sanctum.

Up above, the fallen tree rested uneasily on the north wall. The wind battered everything in its path, and the north wall shook like a leaf.

Ida scrambled down into the half of the chapel that still, barely, stood. For the first time since their meeting, it occurred to her that she did not know the ghost's name, and could not guess which broken tomb now held her bones, but she was too far in to turn back now. There were tombs against the far wall, elegant ladies carved in marble and laid out on stone biers, young girls shown smiling and sweet, but every single one was miraculously unharmed save for the lashing rain that made the marble gleam with every flash of light from the sky.

Despairing, Ida turned away. The altar was smashed beyond recognition, the flagstones in front of it cracked and split apart by falling masonry, and-

Ida began to run towards it, heedless of the sharp broken stones and splinters of roof-beams pressing insistently into her feet, and fell to her knees at the foot of the altar. Lightning cracked high up, and there in front of her, exposed to the wind and the rain and the finger-numbing, vein-freezing cold, lay a pile of bones, glinting off-white and precious in the dark.

“Yes,” whispered the ghost, her feeble voice carried from afar on the raging wind. “I must be warm, I must be in the dark.”

The engraved slab that had served as a memorial was broken in two, one half still in place, the other sticking out of the grave at such an angle that its contents were no longer protected. A long flash of lightning illuminated the wreckage of the chapel and Ida saw, carved into the stone with craftsman's precision, a single name before all was dark again.

“ _Agnes_ ,” she whispered, and far away her ghost smiled in recognition.

She pulled at it with all her might, but to no avail: the heavy stone did not move, made so slick and wet with rain that her hands could not gain purchase. Above her, the fallen yew shifted ominously in its stone cradle.

She looked around in desperation, seeing only broken stones and tombs still unmarred by the night's destruction.

“ _Cold_ ,” said the ghost, “ _please stop the cold,_ ” and Ida knew at once what was necessary.

She pulled off her inner shawl, a thin light thing barely worth having over her shoulders and already soaked through in the storm, and wrapped it around the precious bones.

“ _Yes,_ ” came the whisper on the wind.

In the furthest corner of the chapel, as far away from the south wall as was possible and beyond the reach of the rain and wind, Ida bore her burden to a modest tomb. The writing across the top was still sharp, protected by years beneath the chapel's roof and revealed in every lightning strike: _Here lyeth the body of Elizabeth, beloved wife of John, and Rachell her daughter_.

With a silent prayer of permission to the tomb's occupants, Ida leaned her entire strength against the stone slab that lay across the top and pushed.

It moved, with a harsh grating sound that rivalled the thunder in intensity, and Ida sent up a second prayer of apology to whatever saints were watching over her in that moment. She placed the carefully wrapped bundle into the tomb with all the reverence due to it, and pushed the lid back into place with no care at all for her hands already scraped and grazed by the unyielding stone.

The ghost's relief was a lingering sigh beneath the maelstrom. Ida felt it in her veins and under her very skin, weaving through her and darting through her mind until all she knew was warmth and sweetness and gratitude that bore her exhausted legs back through the ruined chapel, across the grass, and along corridors and galleries until she lay once again in her own narrow bed.

It was only as she fell to sleep that she realised her nightgown was dry, her hair tucked neatly back in its customary braid.

She smiled, and settled beneath the covers into deep slumber.

* * *

She woke to a presence in the room.

“You're _real_ ,” Ida said in wonder. Agnes' dark hair gleamed in the sunlight, and the mattress dipped with the solid weight of her sitting on its edge. She reached out a hand and found Agnes' fingers warm to the touch. “How is this possible?”

“I do not know,” said the ghost. Her lips curved upwards into a sweet smile. “I cannot say what brought me back from the netherworld, nor how it is possible that I can now choose for brief periods to exist as you do, but I suspect-” She looked momentarily bashful. “I suspect I am tied more to this world than I was before. You were very brave, my dear Ida.”

“I did what was necessary.”

“And more besides,” said Agnes.

“Perhaps.” Ida squeezed her hand. “I wished no more than to help you,” she said, gazing into Agnes' pale face, “but now that it is done I find I am afraid that I have played my part. That you no longer have need of me.”

“I no longer need your _help_ ,” Agnes corrected. “But a ghost must have someone to haunt, my dear, do you not think?”

“But what,” said Ida, her grave face alight with laughter, “will the villagers say?”

The ghost kissed her full on the mouth. “They fear governesses leaving,” she said. “Stay, and they will say nothing.

“I intend to,” said Ida, and kissed her back.


End file.
